


Having An Old Friend For Dinner

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Cleverness, Dinner, Implied Smut, M/M, heavily implied smut, trickery, word battles, word volley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-20
Updated: 2014-10-20
Packaged: 2018-02-21 21:38:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2483324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“It was,” Frederick pauses, and licks the heat from his lips, “surprising, to receive your invitation. And not only because it was hand-written. Embossed. Left somehow on my desk, directly.”</i>
</p><p> </p><p>Hannibal invites Frederick for dinner, to discuss their favourite patient in a peculiar game of quid pro quo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Having An Old Friend For Dinner

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DarkDreamsOfHannigram](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkDreamsOfHannigram/gifts).



> Written for the lovely [revnickie](http://revnickie.tumblr.com/), who [commissioned](http://wwhiskeyandbloodd.tumblr.com/donate) a Chilton/Hannibal story from us. First time for both of us writing his pairing but we tried our best! We really hope you like it :D

“Scotch is fine, thank you.”

Frederick allows his coat to be taken, still damp with the melting flakes of an early winter snow. The house itself is warm, despite the chill he feels settle into his skin at the peculiar appointments - animals and their parts, skins and furs, clashing textures and colors across floors and walls and furniture. Ostentatious and gaudy, all deliberately chosen, and all entirely disorienting.

He wonders if that, perhaps, is just as deliberate.

The glass surprises him from his considerations when it’s offered, and he takes a small sip to allow the burn to settle.

“It was,” Frederick pauses, and licks the heat from his lips, “surprising, to receive your invitation. And not only because it was hand-written. Embossed. Left somehow on my desk, directly.”

There is a hint of amusement in his words, a curiosity to his mild dismay.

“Thank you for having me, doctor.”

“I thought it only fair to extend a cordial invitation,” Hannibal allows a smile, a small thing that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Cementing a trust we will both benefit from.”

He himself does not hold a glass, yet, perhaps undecided as to what he wishes to drink, perhaps another deliberate choice. Frederick thinks how he will upset his entire equilibrium if he continues to judge all choices as deliberate somethings. Perhaps for one night he could plead temporary naivete, enjoy his scotch, enjoy what he will grudgingly admit is always an exquisitely made meal, and get the information he, admittedly, agreed to this dinner for.

“And it is always good to reunite with an old friend. Especially in such circumstances.”

“Trying times for us all,” Frederick agrees, unable to resist a smirk as he takes another sip. “Precisely when we should depend on each other, really.”

Their last meeting had been terse, Chilton atop one of the countless staircases that wind their way through his hospital, and Hannibal beneath, regarding him with that stare that would quake most others to find it leveled on them, a bare narrowing just in the muscles beneath his eyes. Chilton had simply been passing on a message from a patient who had requested a change of treatment, and had done so gleefully.

And perhaps also shared a little about what he had discovered during the course of that treatment. Just a hint, just enough, to set Hannibal back on his heels and ease the look from his eyes.

Another sip of whiskey singes slow and luxurious down his throat and Frederick stops himself from treading too far, too quickly, curiosity tugging words that he doesn’t let pass, directing him towards the topic he knows they’re both really here to discuss.

He says nothing of it.

Yet.

“You’ve been well?” he asks instead, civil. Friendly, even. “Your practice seems to be rather booming.”

His shoes click echoing against the expensive tile flooring as he follows Hannibal towards the kitchen, the dining room just beyond.

“It seems people seek help by season,” Hannibal responds, tone light as he gestures for Frederick to sit if he wishes, at the counter, or stand as Hannibal continues the preparation of their meal - intricate as always, and amusingly vegetarian.

“I have found my hands full and enjoying the distraction.”

There is almost an apology in the way Hannibal turns away from his guest for a moment to consider something on the stove, it would be endearing if it wasn’t such an act, such a blatant desire to play at the perfect host. He gets off on it, Frederick knows, the power he can have over the presentation, the awe of his guests at the work and the taste. It’s obscene if it wasn’t so understandable.

And, deplorably, elegant.

“You and I both take incredible pleasure in our work, Frederick,” Hannibal continues, turning back and taking up a towel to wipe his hands clean. He folds it three times length-wise, once across. “It is what makes us both so successful in our field.”

Chilton’s brows lift in response to the praise, though more a statement of fact than anything subjective. The man chooses his words as carefully as he sifts through the herbs chopped and waiting on the counter for him, applies each at the precise moment necessary to alter the flavor he wishes to build.

“A good thing to remind myself occasionally,” Frederick allows, blinking surprise as he goes to sip his scotch and finds it empty already. Rather than draw attention to it - nerves, he knows, annoyance curling his lips downward - he surrounds the base of the snifter with his fingers, obscuring it comfortably as he leans a hand against the counter. “Boundless as the inconsistencies of the human mind might be, I’d be lying if I said after a certain amount of time, it doesn’t all start to feel a bit the same. It doesn’t affect my response to it, of course,” he adds, but follows with a mild tilt of his head. “It’s more that you begin to feel like you’re waiting for that particular case - some new symptomatology - that leads you deeper down the rabbit hole than most of the borderlines and depressives you encounter day in, day out.”

He draws a breath, straightening with a not-disingenuous smile.

“Rather reinvigorating when you find one.”

It’s an allowance, to say so much about the grinding tedium of his own day, though he chose a more delicate way to describe it. Endless lists of the same diseases, the same drugs, the same effects of both, and more often than not, the same causes. He could recite them from memory alone and summarize the majority of his patients at the hospital, barring a few notable exceptions.

Gideon.

Brown.

Graham.

“And validating,” Hannibal agrees, turning the pot to simmer and taking up snifter of his own, pouring two fingers of the brown liquid within before offering to add to Frederick’s glass and have the offer gently waved away.

There is a brief moment where his eyes narrow, a smile that doesn’t touch his lips, that sends Frederick’s back straighter in annoyance, but he does not retract his decision or adjust it. He watches Hannibal set the glass decanter aside and take up his glass to slowly sip and savor the drink within.

“We do find ourselves in the field, in essence, all, seeking out something we cannot understand, that will become our golden goose.”

He shifts his shoulders in a bare shrug and rests his palm against the counter, eyes just to the side of Frederick, meditative.

“Someone who turns our own minds in such a way as to find us sleepless. Curious. Our own insanity as we sift through theirs.”

When he smiles, this time, it is entirely genuine, though small.

“Has Will kept you curious?” he asks.

Frederick returns the slight smile, as much for his own flare of pleasure at the question as to be polite towards his magnanimous host.

“Myself and so many others,” he answers, bitterly amused. “I would say that he’s kept me curious and sated both.” His fingers drum against the glass, empty in his hand, and he watches it rather than Hannibal, whose attention does not waver. “It’s as though every time a question is answered - and they are satisfying answers - more questions unfold from that answer. A mind like a labyrinth, and I’ve yet to catch sight of the end of it.”

“You are assuming there is an end,” Hannibal conjectures.

“I am, yes,” responds Frederick, sitting a little taller on the stool despite the pull he feels in his back from the movement. “Because I am assuming him to be of sound - if altered, and certainly peculiar to start with - mind and body.”

A beat, and he smiles.

“He’s begun to tell me a great deal, about his cases, about his sickness. A great deal more about a great number of things, really,” Frederick drawls, brow lifting.

“You are baiting yourself into an indiscretion,” Hannibal responds amicably, taking another slow drink before setting the glass against his chest in a loose grip, head tilting as he regards the other psychiatrist in front of him. “A breaking of confidence with a patient if I were to ask you about him.”

There is no accusation in his tone, merely a cloying, irritating tilt to it. A bait in itself, for Frederick to admit his tactic, or adjust it. 

A pause between them before Hannibal sets the glass to the counter and settles his other hand against it as well, looming, almost, and yet not aiming to intimidate. If anything, the gesture is almost welcoming of closeness, a frightening display of trust when the mere concept had been skirted.

“Will Graham is an endless pool of one mind or another, his own hidden far beneath the killers he has studied and caught. Within it, strings tangle, accusations come to the surface. Cries for help. Displaced memories.”

Frederick regards him easily, settling back into an easy slump, an allowance of openness expressed through his body language, as well an ease for the general discomfort he feels - here, with Lecter, elsewhere, without, essentially always.

He thinks of Abel Gideon and a furrow sets in his brow.

“But, Hannibal, we are not in court,” he sighs, “and while perhaps ethically distasteful to some, it is not a breach of privilege to discuss a patient’s condition with another physician, especially one who has attended said patient in the past.”

He draws a breath, and continues, shrugging. “And with the awareness we both have that Will has the potential to be a danger to himself, and _certainly_ to others, a breach of confidence in such circumstances would hardly even merit a slap on the wrist from any reasonable psychiatric board.”

The onslaught of words leveled, and space opened between them, Frederick reaches for the decanter with an open-palmed gesture, to which Hannibal nods. Amber liquid fills the bottom quarter of his snifter and he swirls it lazily.

“Can you tell I’ve done this a while?” Frederick muses. “Now that we’ve got that all out of the way, and surely neither of us intend to take the other to court about Will Graham, aren’t you curious at all what he’s said?”

“I’ve been made aware of his accusations,” Hannibal responds, amused. “Of his determination to have my name come up in conversation. With you, specifically. With how obstinate he has been in providing you with any discernable or usable information until very recently.”

Another shift of shoulders, eyes down to regard the drink Hannibal has not yet had to refill for himself.

“You are curious about him, Frederick, you cannot fathom, yet, the depth of him. No one can.”

Eyes up and a lingering look before Hannibal takes up his glass again, turns from Frederick to tend to the meal again.

“A quid pro quo, perhaps. My knowledge for yours, in slowly discovering the enigma that is Will Graham.”

This earns a nearly genuine smile from Frederick, whose mouth presses into a thin line of amusement as he intones, “You do so enjoy your games. Or so I’ve heard.” He swirls the scotch and waits for the vortex to dissipate before he looks upward again, and watches the man at work.

“What do you know of his family, beyond what’s readily available in his profile?” Frederick ventures, a soft opener to begin the game. “Whenever I ask he sighs at me. Tells me it’s lazy psychiatry,” he adds, wry.

The words nearly cause Hannibal to miss a beat in the careful choreography of his plating. His expression lingers in a practiced neutrality, as though he has never heard those words before - as though Will had not once smirked them at him directly - and continues through towards the dining room.

“I’m afraid there is little more to it than what you’ve seen,” Hannibal answers over his shoulder. “The boatyards and the absent mother, numerous moves throughout formative years but no long-lasting repercussions, it seems. He has spoken about it to me but in no great detail.”

“And you don’t think he’s obfuscating?”

“No,” Hannibal responds, dusting his hands lightly across his apron before returning. “I think that were his childhood a negative influence, he would be glad to have that as a place to begin understanding why he is the way he is.”

An arm around his shoulders, a hand wrapped in the cheap, showy tie knotted around his neck, and Frederick would bend for him, Hannibal decides, not the inverse. He would be startled, certainly, the two have exchanged little more than stiff handshakes, but overwhelmed by the strength that Hannibal knows he carries, the size of him in comparison to the other doctor, he would blush and gasp from parted lips, exclaiming something tedious and obscene in his surprise...

“So Freudian,” Frederick sighs, and Hannibal smiles at the direction his mind had gone, orchestrating such a lead-in to something so predictable.

“Someone with so extraordinary a mind would not have had a simple upbringing, something would have been triggered with it. His antisocial responses, his inability to effectively communicate his ideas and falling instead to crude metaphor.”

Hannibal removes his apron, folding it neatly on the counter for the time, and taking up his own plate to take to the table. He gestures for Frederick to walk before him.

“Will has an exceptional mind and quite the capability of allowing only certain individuals to see within it,” Hannibal points out, setting his plate and bringing a hand to work open one button on his jacket before sitting down.

“You seem to be the only one to have ever gotten much from him but sarcasm and omission.”

A quirk of his lips and Hannibal tilts his head, regarding his meal, spread so beautifully before him.

“Sometimes such a mind requires a firm hand before it can be gentled, to achieve the same results,” he responds. “Regardless, even a tame creature learns to withhold its teeth if it means it can eat.” A small smile as Hannibal takes up his cutlery. “Does Will think I play games with him, still?”

Frederick studies him for a beat, two, too long before turning towards his plate to taste politely.

“Really quite excellent,” he claims, as he knows he must, before rolling his eyes towards the ceiling in consideration of the question.

“His story has not fundamentally changed,” Frederick continues, after a few pensive moments. “But it has developed, one might say. As I mentioned when we spoke last at the hospital, his mind has been tampered with. Altered. Beyond what I myself have heard during our sessions, and more to the point of your question, _Will_ is aware of this. Recognizing that his seizures were being actively triggered has admittedly done little to return you to his confidence.”

Across the table, then, instead, where they now find themselves. Chilton could be readily convinced of his own desires for this, the promise of collusion, of shared information about their patients and their peers. Or, just as easily, Hannibal could work him over by force of conviction, the sort of authority towards which Frederick has always cowed.

He would pin him there on his belly and snarl in his ear that the base for the sauce is not at all vegetarian, and delight in his squirming.

“Is that the firm hand you suggested?” Chilton asks, interrupting Hannibal’s thoughts abruptly. “Or were there other factors between you both?”

Holding him down would not be an effort, either. Though the man was far from weak he was not coordinated for a struggle, unpracticed in the art. He would find himself twisting beneath a paced heartbeat and silent mahogany, forward into a cruel angle and back against heated promises. And all in a moment of Hannibal’s blatant pleasure in having Frederick so subdued. He would much rather see his face when he took him.

“There is a great deal of intimacy between a psychiatrist and their patient,” Hannibal responds, taking a moment for another bite of dinner, the relishing in the strong, smooth flavor of the vegetables, the hint of something other within.

Frederick would probably close his eyes against him. Pity.

“Trust is developed, walls broken. Though the practices Will accuses me of are far from ethical, those he withholds his accusations for would be frowned upon by any… _reasonable_ psychiatric board.”

Another of those cryptic, deeply pleased smiles and Hannibal considers how Will’s lips would still be softer, sweeter, more willing to part on sounds of pleasure, hard won as they have undoubtedly been, than Frederick’s.

“Have you attempted gentleness, not coercion, in your therapy with him? He is quite responsive without words ever needing to be a factor.”

“Ah,” Frederick breathes, unable to hide his surprise at the admissions, veiled though they are for the sake of denial, and Hannibal presses his lips together in thought of how that same utterance would sound against the table, the man’s breath greying warm across the cool surface.

No, he would not be coaxing or tender, he would give the man the same treatment that Chilton gives to Will, attempting to dominate his beautiful mind to submission. Broad hands pressed between Chilton’s thighs, pants jerked down to around his knees, spit-slick fingers coiling upward to circle against his entrance. He knows Chilton would arch shameless for the attention, would imagine it as an immediate pleasure and a later victory, to lord this torrid moment over Hannibal as a threat, as blackmail, _remember what happened when you invited me to dinner_...

“I have tried to reason with him,” Frederick answers, consideringly, but Hannibal’s glance towards him lingers a moment too long and Frederick’s mouth twists into a faint moue. “I suppose that still falls under coercion, although I would disagree with your use of that word, fundamentally.”

He swirls his scotch again and breathes in as he sips it, savoring it before regarding Hannibal with a visible skepticism. “I’m afraid it’s unlikely that I would engage with him in the degree of _gentleness_ that you seem to have in your time with him, but I take your point. For all his rancor and spite, he is - by nature - a rather sensitive creature, isn’t he?” A pause, and Chilton’s smile widens. “That’s not my question, though.”

Two fingers to start, not one, Hannibal decides, sipping his own drink and watching Frederick with eminent patience.

“At this point in time,” Frederick considers, “is your interest in Will Graham primarily professional, or personal?”

It would be more worth his time to draw out the pain of the actual penetration than the preparation for it, well worth the sounds it would bring forth, the flush and humiliation at being so bested.

“Will Graham once told me that were I to ever publish a work about him or his mind, it would have to be done post-mortem,” Hannibal responds quietly, as the other continues his meal, small bites to appear more cultured when he simply looks pretentious. “When I asked him whether he meant my death or his own he told me that it did not matter to him which came first.”

His hair would be damp, by then, with the struggle, the effort to hold back the sounds, to hold back the natural responses of his body as Hannibal pushed in deep and held him down, arched his neck to mark him there, a reminder that while Hannibal would have been the one to initiate their relations at dinner, Frederick would be wearing the aftermath against his skin for days.

“Would you take such a risk with yourself, Frederick?”

Against his throat, under his chin where he would not be able to hide it, as Hannibal drove deeper bruises into his thighs, red marks against his back as the table pressed harder to it.

“Would you risk your career on a coin toss of chance, for Will Graham?”

And the sounds… by that point the sounds would be uncontrollable, hands gripping and marking beneath the expensive shirt of the man bearing down on him.

“We had decided, in the end, that a personal relationship was far more mutually beneficial. I am his friend, Frederick.”

“No wonder he thinks he’s so betrayed,” Chilton responds, before he can stop himself from doing so. Hannibal’s chin catches on a cant, slightly lifted in a way that would seem curious to most, but to Frederick seems particularly threatening. “It isn’t very friendly to go rummaging around in someone’s head like that,” he adds, by way of explanation, and takes a quick swallow of scotch to stop himself from saying more.

By the throat, fingernails sunk into it to toy with his breath, take it and return it, again and again, until dizzied, Frederick pleaded his name. Driving his cock into him, legs spread as wide as Hannibal could hold them, until the table rattled beneath them. Perhaps he would tighten a fist in his tie, were he still wearing it, jerk it tight beneath his chin to see him squirm in delight, in alarm.

“Is that your question then?” asks Chilton, brows lifting. “Would I risk my career over Will Graham?”

“Yes,” intones Hannibal. He sets his fork aside, and dabs his lips with the cloth napkin.

“That’s a softball,” sighs Chilton, laughing. “No. It is for my career that I wish to resolve the question of him. There’s no glory in posthumous publishing, and since I don’t share your _personal_ nearness with the man, I’m lacking that additional ‘mutual benefit’ to allowing him such free reign as you have.”

He sets his fork aside similarly, content to follow the host’s lead in resting his napkin on the table, and runs his fingers across his mouth, watching Hannibal at length.

“You asked me if Will thought you were still playing games,” Frederick says. “Are you?”

He would make it last, draw it out, until the fingers against him grew weaker, the marks delicious throbs of red behind his eyes when he thought about them. He would bring the man to arching, would feel him quiver against Hannibal with soft breaths and hooded eyes. He would make him remember.

He considers dinner, both of them finished, Frederick having left enough on his plate to still be polite. Hannibal will excuse it with the topic of conversation keeping them both so distracted.

He allows another smile, another tilt of his head in acknowledgement of the question, though he takes up his glass to finish of his drink to delay the answer.

In his mind, beneath him, he finally grants Frederick release, finally allows him to fall pliant back against the table with a sound as close to a sob as the man would allow, and never again admit to. In his mind, Hannibal strokes a thumb over Frederick’s lips and presses them closed, forcing more sweet sounds from him as he catches his breath through his nose instead, turns and twists and arches beneath Hannibal, offering his throat, now, entirely without coercion.

As Will had, once.

As Will would again.

“The games I set, Frederick, are not simple tricks, they are not brief pursuits. They are planned and perfected to last, sometimes they go on without my supervision.”

Hannibal pushes back his chair and stands, taking up his plate and moving around the table to gather Frederick’s as well.

“Sometimes they grow minds of their own and play around me, and I am but a spectator.” A pause, a brief motion to draw his fingers against Frederick’s shoulder, an accidental touch to anyone else, but the man shivers, stiffens.

“I am playing games, Frederick, but not with Will Graham,” he murmurs, waits until the other turns back to look at him with an expression barely veiling disbelief, displeasure and the faintest, most delightful tinge of fear. Hannibal’s smile merely grows.

“Dessert?”


End file.
